


Joke

by denimdisaster



Category: Persona 5
Genre: (kinda), Coming of Age, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Self-Doubt, happy bday mhai!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denimdisaster/pseuds/denimdisaster
Summary: Ryuji has been receiving these strange letters in his locker, as of late.Almost like calling cards.





	Joke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mhai!](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Mhai%21).



> it was really hard to think of a title dont @ me!!! i was looking through bts song lyrics in all honesty bc theyre often very pretty but i couldnt think of any so then i was like hmm i wrote another p5 fic called queen of hearts (not posted yet, its for a zine), maybe i could match that  
> but the reason that one is clever is bc makoto's alias is queen and ann is a very lovable girl. and theres noone called king  
> so THEN i was like ....joker........hm............ and went hey wait a minute! joke! cuz ryuji thinks its a joke and also... rm..... my man
> 
> anyways this got super long sorry
> 
> happy birthday mhai!! i hope you like it even though it was kinda rushed haha <33333

_Sakamoto Ryuji_ ,  
_The boy guilty of taking my heart._  
_You should have worn your uniform more properly -_  
_it is a crime to look that good in school._  
_I will be coming for your heart in return._  
_Prepare to get swept off your feet._

  
  
It was the fifth one so far. They all read somewhat the same - he had taken someone’s heart, a line about what in particular it was this time, and then a sentence urging him to prepare himself. He was flattered, honestly. Confused. Very confused, especially since there was no name at the bottom - but he felt honored, special, emotions he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. That someone wanted _him_ … Of course, he had toyed with the idea that it was a joke, the first few times. More than toyed with it, it had been his first thought after the horror of finding a _calling card_ in his locker had passed - he couldn’t imagine someone actually crushing on him, in all honesty, most of the school still hated him. And even among his friends… Sometimes, he got the feeling that they didn’t want him around, either. But that they couldn’t get rid of him when he knew their identities.

  
He knew that it was probably illogical. Akira had told him that he enjoyed his presence, once or twice, and Yusuke never outright _complained_ , so that was something, right..? And though Ann never said anything like it, he was sure she was okay with him… At least on a good day. On a good day he could see that his teammates - his _friends_ \- probably meant nothing by everything they said, that Ann’s complaints and Morgana’s chastising and Makoto’s sighs were unimportant, that he was their friend regardless and that they accepted him as he was.

On a bad day he felt like they would rather have anyone but him.

And he hated it, because he knew where the thoughts came from, and he didn’t want his father and Kamoshida to keep fucking with his life, didn’t want them to keep their hold on him and wasn’t comfortable with them having permanently screwed with his head and sense of self-worth.

But he really couldn’t see what the Phantom Thieves saw in him, either, or if there was anything at all, if they weren’t just tolerating him out of fear of him running his mouth and getting them caught. On a bad day Morgana’s comments about how stupid and useless he was hurt more than they should - every “you’re hopeless” hurt tenfold when he didn’t think that it should. Getting told that “I guess you’re good for _something_ ” when he managed to avoid an attack didn’t make him feel proud. It just made him fixate on the implication that there was no other worth to him besides that, the implication that he was nothing but a burden.

  
So getting letters from someone who truly seemed to love him was a welcome surprise. Because they wouldn’t have persisted for so long if they weren’t being genuine, right…? And the compliments were too specific. Like how his eyes crinkled when he smiled, or how soft his skin was - _had the mystery person touched him?_ -, or how cute his bad boy attitude was. He had scoffed at that one. Cute? Him? He hadn’t been called cute in _years_ , and for good reason.  
Though the secret admirer seemed to think otherwise... It felt weird to think about. _Him?_ Getting a secret admirer, letters in his locker and all? Sure, they weren’t very classical, and it wasn’t a confession under cherry blossoms, but regardless of the vaguely threatening tone in the letters that would - were it not for the soft compliments - indicate hate instead of love, they were _love letters_.

  
And despite their threatening nature… Nothing had come off them. There was still no name on them besides his, no ‘meet me behind the school on Friday’. He was left hanging, and it felt oddly disappointing - he hadn’t missed this before, but now that he was receiving letters and he just couldn’t know who it was that sent them… It felt empty. Left him painfully aware of a hollow space in his heart which he hadn’t known existed until now.

With a sigh, he meticulously put the card in his bag, being careful not to bend it. If his mystery phantom thief wasn’t going to steal his heart any time soon…

Well, at least he could treasure the cards.

  
  
❃❃❃

  
  
He wasn’t sure how he had ended up _studying_ , with _Akira_ , in his _own home_.

Or: He was. Akira had asked. And Ryuji just couldn’t say no to him.

  
It felt weird to have friends over. It was one thing, going to LeBlanc, whether alone or with the rest of the Phantom Thieves, but having people in his apartment… He wasn’t sure he had done that more than once, maybe twice. He had a rather strong memory of Ann coming over when they were kids, because he remembered the unsure, almost scared look on her face and he remembered chastising her about being too loud, _his dad was sleeping_ , but he couldn’t recall it ever happening again. He had always gone to other people’s places. Never home.

  
But his dad wasn’t around anymore, and his mother worked late, so he only spared a split second to worry once Akira requested it before he instantly agreed. And almost instantly he regretted it. Because the apartment was _messy_ , and moreover, it was _dirty_. Sure, Akira lived in an attic - but it was a nice attic, even nicer than the attic in Kiki’s delivery service, and that was a very cozy attic - and it was never messy because _Akira_ knew how to take care of himself.

  
Ryuji did, too, but it was different. He knew how to cook for himself and he knew how to fight back and he knew how to tend a split lip. He didn’t know how to fix the holes in the walls or the broken sink or the bedroom door which was hanging loosely on its hinges. And no matter how much he tried to scrub the floors clean - to ease the burden on his mother, make the sigh when she stepped into the apartment just a little bit lighter - it just wouldn’t _look_ clean. He guess that poverty came with ugly floors and bleached carpets and stained wallpapers, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t embarrassed about it. Even though logically, Akira already knew about his family situation and the fact that it was only his mother bringing in money, even though Ryuji had told him on several occasions that _sorry, I can’t come with, I can’t afford it_ , he was embarrassed about showing proof of it.

  
At least Morgana wouldn’t come with. He didn’t think he could have survived the scrunch of his nose at the smell in the staircase or the disapproving look he would give the dirty dishes his mother didn’t have time to clean before she left for work.

Akira didn’t say a word about the state of the apartment. He wasn’t like ten year old Ann who tried to pretend she wasn’t surprised by telling him that he had a “nice home” - he knew that it wasn’t nice, and so did she, and the pity made him feel alien in his own home. He hated it. Hated being pitied almost more than he hated disapproval. But Akira didn’t give him any of it, just smiled when he saw him and said a quiet ‘おじゃまします’ to no one in particular, knowing full well that Ryuji’s mother was away and that Ryuji wouldn’t mind his presence in a million years.

  
It was nice to see him. He had always thought… Always thought that it was nice to be around Akira, that he had a personality which at once made him feel calmer, at home, and as though his blood was on fire and he could accomplish _anything_ , as long as Akira was with him. It was even nice to study with him, something which he would have thought was impossible if it had been anyone but him. Sure, he couldn’t focus - he was sure he had read this sentence at least six times by now, but he still had no idea what it said - but he never could, it was nothing new. And just looking at Akira was more than enough to make up for the lack of studying he actually got done.

  
He had such long eyelashes, Ryuji had noticed. He had thought there was something about his eyes the first time he met him, too, but the length of someone’s eyelashes wasn’t exactly something you noticed until three dates in when your lips were on theirs. And once that thought had been thought, the images wouldn’t leave his head. His head was constantly swimming with the desire to kiss him every time he saw him. But it could have been worse. It wasn’t his first crush, and it wasn’t his first crush on a boy - Ryuji knew how to handle this.

He swallowed it.

  
Not Akira - though honestly, he would have wanted to - but the crush, the embarrassing infatuation he had with someone who should only be his best friend. He let himself _think_ , and _wonder_ , and _imagine_ , but nothing beyond that. Had to keep dream and reality separate. Akira was out of his league, anyways, like one of those expensive art pieces in museums that he wouldn’t be able to afford in this life or another - it was okay to look, but not to touch. Never touch.

  
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so one track minded in his staring, though. Because while Akira didn’t notice… He knew that he could get hyper focused on things, and he knew that attempting to do more than one thing at once when he was intensely focused on something was a bad idea because really, he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing, but he had thought that he could at least grab his bag from the chair next to him without causing an _event_.

  
He couldn’t.

  
The sound of it toppling over and the contents spilling out on the floor was loud enough to bring Akira’s head up from his book, blinking owlishly and standing up to help him. It was embarrassing. The knowledge that he had been so focused on watching Akira make notes with slender fingers and tapping the pen against pretty lips that he had crashed his bag onto the floor just because Akira was too pretty was _embarrassing_ and had his ears and cheeks burning.

  
But it was even more embarrassing when he was finishing picking up books and realized that Akira had frozen, a red, familiar piece of paper in his hands and a goddamn blush on his face. If he hadn’t been so horrified by the realization that Akira had found the card which he had tried so hard to keep private, he was sure he would have stared at the red across his face for longer because he looked even prettier like that, surprised and scandalized. Or embarrassed, or angry - you could never tell, with Akira. Ryuji found it intriguing.

  
“You kept it?” Akira asked in a small voice and wow, that was not what he had been expecting. A “ _what’s this?_ ”, maybe, or “ _ **you** got a love letter?_ ” or perhaps a “ _why didn’t you tell me about this?_ ”. He hadn’t expected Akira to already _know_.

  
Though then again, he wasn’t known for being very inconspicuous. It wasn’t hard to imagine that perhaps he had seen him reading a card in school and just hadn’t bothered him about it until the opportunity presented itself.

  
“Y-yeah, of course” he said, voice cracking but eyes searching for Akira’s, to try and hold his gaze. Prove that he was sure of what he was doing.  
Akira didn’t meet his eyes.

Instead, he ran his fingers over the uneven surface of the card, like Ryuji had done so many times. It was a surprisingly good copy and if it wasn’t for the sappy wording and the lack of a signature, Ryuji would have almost believed it to be real.

“Do you…” And Ryuji had to watch Akira’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat, couldn’t look away. “Do you know who wrote it?”

  
He sighed. “No,” he said. “I wish, but it’s just… I can’t think of anyone, really. There’s not even the handwriting to go on. Ann thought it was a prank.”

Something peculiar flickered over Akira’s face. Had Ryuji not known better, he would have said that it was _fear_ , with the way his eyes slightly widened and his lips trembled oh-so-slightly, and that captured all of his attention, honestly, there wasn’t much of anything else he could think of when Akira’s full lips parted like that.

  
“Ann?” He asked in a weak voice. “Ann… Knows?”

He shrugged and looked away in favor of picking on the threads in his jeans. His mother would have scolded him for that, if she had been here.

  
“Yeah man… It’s easy to talk to her about that kinda stuff. Sorry for not telling you, or whatever, it’s just…” He swallowed. Wasn’t sure how to say _I’m kind of in love with you_ without destroying his bond with a friend he cherished more than life itself.  
“I didn’t want to bother you,” he settled for. It wasn’t a complete lie.

 

Akira looked conflicted. Ryuji hadn’t seen this many emotions on him in the entire time he had known him, and it felt like a privilege, to see him like this, even though seeing him distressed tugged far too harshly on his heartstrings.

  
“I…” He cleared his throat. “I wrote it,” he finally said, looking anywhere but Ryuji.

  
_What?_

  
There was no way… He must have misheard - there was no way that _Akira_ \- that Akira found _his_ smile cute or that he admired his strength or that he thought he was good looking or-  
But then he looked at him, and Ryuji knew that he wasn’t joking.

He didn’t know _why_ Akira would like someone like him. But he had a strong, red blush on his cheeks, hands tightly clenched around the card that Ryuji distantly worried was getting crumpled, and he knew that for some reason, he _did_ like him.

  
“You don’t have to like me back,” Akira began, and Ryuji felt his eyes widen to the point where it must look comical, if Akira would look at him. “I get that you’re probably straight, or whatever-”

“Of course I’m not straight!” He interrupted, not bearing to see the hurt look on his face any longer. “And of course I like you, I just don’t get it!”

At this, finally, he lifted his gaze from the floor and _looked at him_. And his eyes were wide in surprise, there was something shining in them, achingly similar to _hope_. As if there was ever any confusion about whether or not Ryuji would accept his roundabout way of confessing.

“Don’t get it…?” He asked, a hopeful lilt in his voice that had been painfully absent from the rest of the conversation.

  
“Why you would like me, I mean,” he said and scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment, seeing out of the corner of his eye how Akira’s face lit up in understanding, a smile growing on his face. “Like I know the letters said a bunch of stuff but I just don’t see it, and I’ve been crushing on you for ages, it feels kind of unrealistic that you would just, I don’t know, recipr-”

He was cut off then.  
And he discovered that _yes_ , Akira’s lips were just as soft as they looked, that his fingers felt even nicer when they were on his face than they did on occasional, accidental brushes of hands against hands. That his hair was thick and silky and that he gasped when he tugged on it, shivered when Ryuji smirked into the kiss. It wasn’t his first kiss, and it wasn’t his first kiss with a boy. He knew what to do.

  
He opened his mouth and allowed for the kiss to deepen into territory yet undiscovered because he knew that as long as Akira was with him, it would be alright.

  
  
The crumpled calling card laid forgotten on the floor - his heart _had_ been stolen, just like it promised. He found that he didn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> >:) talk to me on twitter for more persona 5 and kpop lol @oliviaspov
> 
> btw: the reason the card looks so fancy is bc yusuke helped akira make it lol. such a nice (gay) guy


End file.
